


what faust couldn’t know

by tombenough_and_continent



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Canon, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Physical Abuse, Please be warned, my best attempt to destroy the Grandmasters ship with Greek fire, there's just so much abuse and violence dear god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 13:11:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17808593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tombenough_and_continent/pseuds/tombenough_and_continent
Summary: Salem will always know Ozma, even if Ozma no longer knows Salem. So she knows exactly how to make him an offer he can’t refuse.(Salem gives Ozma an offer: his eternal suffering for the safety of Humanity.)





	what faust couldn’t know

**Author's Note:**

> this document on my laptop is titled “Ozpin what the FUCK” and that feels about accurate. 
> 
> thanks a million to Alyss_Penedo, who is now enabling me to do horrible things to my sleep schedule while writing these. this fic is definitely at least subconsciously inspired by her "destiny has written your end, baby, but your origins are up in the air," in which Salem raises Oscar and everyone is generally horrified
> 
> hella content warning for Oz suffering and dying in many horrific ways to varying degrees of explicitness. Also for Salem’s abuse — she’s already canonically an abuser, but this fic takes that and turns it up past eleven. Past twelve. idk my meter is broken
> 
> please be warned. the writing of this horrified me, but then, what about Salem and Oz doesn’t horrify me

 

She finds him again, four lifetimes after she murdered their children.

 

The first lifetime he spends wandering in a daze, and the pain in his bones is an afterthought to the pain that seems to be eating its way through his entire soul.

 

In the second, his host body is young enough to drink and feel it, so he does.

 

In the third, he realizes that his hosts have lives and families of their own, lives that he’s interrupting, so he wakes up in a new body and bites his metaphorical tongue and tries not to interfere. He’s unpracticed, though, so when an Ursa smashes its way through the man’s front door, Ozma yelps in surprise. His host whips around, searching for the source of the sound, and Ozma assesses the situation — take over and save this man’s life, or stay silent and die with him — and decides.

 

He takes control in a shower of gold, grabs the nearest chair, and slams it into the Ursa’s face.

 

The kitchen is a wreck by the time the Grimm dissolves, and Ozma speaks out loud — “ _I’m sorry_ ” — before he relinquishes the body.

 

“Oliver?” The man’s wife emerges from the back room, their daughter tucked in her arms. “What just…?” She looks around, taking in the broken front door, the smashed furniture.

 

Ozma tucks himself back in to a corner of Oliver’s mind, silently berating himself for slipping up. Oliver looks at his hands, then back up at his wife.

 

“I’m not… exactly sure,” Oliver admits.

 

Three days later, as the village recuperates from the Grimm attacks, Oliver walks straight into the forest. If Ozma had hands, he would be biting his knuckles to restrain himself because _what in the name of sanity was Oliver thinking, there were still Grimm out there—!_

 

“You know,” Oliver says when they’re far enough into the trees that prying ears won’t hear, “I know you’re in there.”

 

Ozma is nonplussed. He’d be holding his breath if he had breath to hold.

 

Oliver takes off his glasses and rubs them against his blue shirt. “I don’t know why you don’t talk, and how you can take control of my body like that, but you saved my family. We can talk about the body stealing later, but I should thank you first.”

 

Ozma can’t believe his ears. Oliver’s ears.

 

Oliver sighs. “Look, I can hear your thoughts.”

 

_I’m sorry WHAT._

 

“And I can only assume that you can hear mine as well,” Oliver continues doggedly. “Which is all sorts of awkward.”

 

That’s it. _Awkward barely begins to cover it._

 

Oliver startles and looks around.

 

 _You asked me to talk_.

 

“I did,” Oliver mutters. “It’s just… unexpected. Why haven’t you said anything before?”

 

_I was trying not to interfere with your life._

 

“Then why are you even in my head?”

 

Images flash through Ozma’s mind — a golden man with antlers, an imposing castle, shattered glass windows — and he tries to shove them away, he doesn’t want to relive that, not where Oliver can see —

 

“Oh.” Ozma’s jolted out of his train of thought when Oliver sits down on the forest floor with a _thump_. “ _Oh_. That’s why. Okay.”

 

 _I’m sorry._ Ozma genuinely, truly is — in addition to mortified, and embarrassed, and ashamed. _I’m, ah, pretty new to this co-existing in one mind thing._

 

“Yeah, no kidding. Which is weird, considering that this is your… third time around?”

 

For a moment, Ozma tries to stifle his guilt before he realizes that Oliver can probably sense that too. _I may have… taken over my previous hosts._

 

Oliver stiffens, hands clenching, though Ozma knows that’s more of an instinctive response than anything. “We’re going to have many, many conversations about how that’s not okay later.”

 

Ozma sends Oliver the feeling of nodding fervently, and the man relaxes.

 

“So… what do we do now?”

 

_I’m really just trying to not be a presence in your life, so if we’re done here, I can just —_

 

“Nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening.” Oliver pushes himself to standing and folds his arms. “You know how to do things I don’t. Things that can make us better at handling the Grimm.”

 

 _I mean, yes, but —_ but Ozma’s usual methods for handling the Grimm usually involved a lot more light shows and fireworks and —

 

“You can do _magic?!_ ”

 

_I — well — yes?_

 

“Great.” Oliver lets out a long exhale. “Okay, so here’s the plan: I am going to walk back through the village. You are going to tell me, along the way, what we can do to make our defenses better. And then we are going to work together to make sure less people die. Sound good?”

 

_Well—_

 

“Yes or no?”

 

Ozma’s more bewildered by the man’s forwardness than anything else. _Yes?_

 

“Okay, good.” Oliver squares his shoulders.

 

_You’re… taking this awfully well._

 

Oliver shrugs. “You know, I’ve had this feeling like someone’s watching me behind my back for the past few months, and it’s been setting me on edge. It’s good to finally know that there’s a reason for that, crazy as it is.”

 

_You’re not crazy. I can promise you that._

 

“Thanks, voice-in-my-head. Do you have a name, by the way?”

 

 _Ozma_.

 

“Good to meet you, Ozma. I’m Oliver.”

 

Oliver is surprisingly demanding, for a man who just had a reincarnating entity shoved into his head. He grills Ozma on the best ways to fight the Grimm and the organization of a village militia, asking for his input on every step. Ozma offers what insights he can, the occasional suggestion, and if a melee gets bad enough, offers to take over for Oliver. That rarely happens, though, and they both agree that casual magic usage would be too difficult for Oliver to explain, so Ozma keeps the fireworks to a minimum.

 

Strangely enough, Ozma’s favorite moments are the ones Oliver spends with his wife, Meris, and their two daughters. Oliver tucks them into bed one night, and as he gazes down on them fondly, Ozma becomes dizzy with how achingly familiar the sight looks, and tries futilely to fight back the wave of emotion.

 

Oliver, of course, notices, and his breath hitches when he gets it. _That’s… terrible. I’m sorry._ It had taken them some time, but they could now communicate silently, entire conversations happening even while other people were in the room.

 

Ozma tries to push himself further into his corner of Oliver’s mind. _I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be ruining your time with your family, this is my fault and —_

 

“Hey.” Oliver’s voice is low, trying not to wake his sleeping daughters. He lays a hand over his chest, pressing over his heart, and Ozma is struck by the warmth and compassion the other man radiates. “You’re allowed to grieve.”

 

And just like that, it all falls away, and Ozma is left, like a tree after a rainstorm, wondering in the sudden wash of sunlight.

 

——————

 

Ozma’s hosts rarely die in their sleep, and Oliver is no different, though Ozma fights to protect him as much as he can, using more and more magic as Oliver ages.

 

The Grimm attacks are becoming more frequent, too. Oliver and Ozma spend nights poring over pages of cramped notes, of numbers and information they’d gathered from travellers and nearby towns, rumors of whole armies of Grimm razing villages to the ground.

 

“But that makes no sense,” Oliver says out loud, frustrated. “The Grimm aren’t sentient, they can’t _organize_.”

 

The Grimm don’t need sentience to organize, Ozma realizes a few weeks later, as he sucks in another rattling breath. All they need is a leader.

 

Their Aura is broken, along with more than a few of their ribs; he’s fairly certain at least one has punctured a lung, and though he isn’t one to give up a fight, he knows when a fight is over.

 

His breath catches on the ash in the air, and he almost passes out from the coughing fit that ensues.

 

Oliver is battering at his control from the inside, crying and screaming, but Ozma won’t let him, won’t let him take any of the pain, because Oliver doesn’t deserve it and he never did, so Ozma will bear it alone and take the two of them into the dark and—

 

He jolts awake with a gasp, and his body feels like it’s on fire. He drags ashy eyelids open and is promptly greeted with with the flickering light of dancing flames.

 

That would explain why he feels like he’s on fire.

 

This body feels much younger, though, and mercifully free of broken ribs. Given the thick smoke in the air around him, Ozma assumes that his new host had just passed out from lack of air.

 

It _was_ rather hard to breathe.

 

Coughing — and wasn’t it a treat, that he could still feel the phantom pains from Oliver’s death (oh, no, _Oliver_ ) — Ozma curls his fingers and summons all the magic he can, body trembling with the effort.

 

He flicks his hand towards the encroaching fire, and the skies break open.

 

That, in retrospect, was his first mistake, but Ozma’s too busy sagging in relief as the fires die away to care.

 

————

 

He’s learned from Oliver, and introduces himself immediately to Oren. Oren is twenty-one, recently lost his entire family and community, and more than willing to let Ozma take the lead.

 

Taking over Oren’s body doesn’t sit right with Ozma, but the younger man is still reeling from the combination of grief, shock, and smoke inhalation, and thinking about the problems of agency and choice in Ozma’s relationships with his host just makes him think about Oliver, and they’re both grieving, so neither of them are really thinking at their finest. Someone has to keep the two of them going, though, so Ozma drags them up in the mornings and keeps them moving through the nights.

 

He doesn’t even know how to start a conversation with Oren, so he settles for emoting patience, compassion, and sympathy at the other man as constantly as he can. Oren is silent, for the most part, wrapped in his own grief, and honestly, Ozma gets it. They travel through the countryside, a dark-haired ghost in mourning.

 

They don’t have many supplies with them, so Ozma fashions a quarterstaff-slash-walking-stick out of a stout branch and shaves away the twigs and bark with Oren’s pocketknife. It reminds him of his scepter, but he pushes those thoughts away. As long as it’s serviceable, he thinks darkly, cracking it down on the head of a Beowolf. He lets go of the staff with his left hand and fires a bolt of energy at the other Beowulf, which dissolves instantly.

 

The skies rumble overhead. It looks like rain.

 

—————

 

Magic, it turns out, is how Salem finds him.

 

He’s taken to travelling from village to village, helping them organize their defenses against Grimm attacks in exchange for supplies and a night’s rest on a real bed. Sometimes, he spots a trail of smoke on the horizon, arrives at a run to villages being ravaged by groups of Ursas, packs of Beowolves, flocks of Nevermores. Sometimes, the only way he can save lives is by concentrating magic between his palms (he misses having a focus for his magic, because it helped a _lot_ ) and letting it explode outwards in a widening column of white light, vaporizing the Grimm where they stand.

 

He tries to use that only as a last resort, though, because it leaves him feeling drained for the few days, and people look at him with such reverence in their eyes that he can’t help but think of the days they mistakenly worshiped him as a god.

 

He arrives almost too late for the village of Vesper, and even after he blasts all the Grimm into oblivion, less than half of the village is still standing, the townspeople with black smudges of exhaustion on their faces. Ozma is tired, so tired that he feels it in Oren’s too-young bones. He barely even remembers falling into bed that night.

 

He wakes the next morning to a town awash in whispers, and when he steps outside, quarterstaff in hand, he realizes why.

 

There’s a woman standing alone in the middle of the square, sheathed in a long black dress, blood red accents matching the deep hue of her eyes. Ozma flinches when he sees her, and her gaze zeroes in on him.

 

“Hello, my love,” Salem purrs, and every bone in his body turns to ice.

 

————

Salem, it turns out, is here to offer him a deal.

 

“Come with me,” she says, “and I won’t burn this cute little village to the ground.”

 

The townspeople of Vesper are cowering against the walls of the houses that are still standing, and Ozma would join them if he could. “Salem, please—” he begins.

 

She cuts him off with a _tsk_. “You aren’t in a position to bargain, my dear,” she says.

 

His grip tightens on his quarterstaff, but he knows he can’t fight her — not when he so recently drained his magical reserves.

 

“Drop your stick, Ozma,” Salem says. “It’s unbecoming. You deserve better, you know that.”

 

Ozma grits his teeth and moves slowly to put the quarterstaff on the ground. A flash of gold surges across his vision, and suddenly he’s on his hands and knees, and Ozma is no longer in control.

 

Oren raises his head slowly, defiantly. “You.”

 

Salem frowns, putting the pieces together.

 

“You’re the master of the Grimm, aren’t you?” Oren asks.

 

Salem growls. “I was in the middle of a conversation, you foolish little—”

 

 _“Answer the question._ ” Ozma is shocked at how much cold steel there is in Oren’s voice.

 

She narrows her eyes. “Yes.”

 

“You control them, tell them where to go.”

 

She sighs. “Listen, boy, this is none of your concern—”

 

“ _Answer the question!”_

 

Salem stills. “Yes,” she says, one hand slowly furling into a fist.

 

 _She’s preparing to spellcast!_ Ozma shouts at Oren, who responds with an icy

_I_

_don’t_

_**care** _ **.**

 

“If you take him,” Oren says, getting to his feet, “you leave Humanity alone. Call off the Grimm.” His hand moves towards his back pocket, and Ozma realizes Oren’s gambit with terrible, crystal, clarity.

 

Salem tilts her head. “And why should I do that?”

 

“Because if you don’t, I’ll kill us,” Oren says, matter-of-fact, and in one swift motion, he has the pocketknife out and pressed against his own neck. Ozma suppresses a thrill of alarm, but he doesn’t object. “And now that we know that you track us through magic, we’ll be better hidden. It’ll take lifetimes for you to find him again, if you ever do at all.”

 

A tense, breathless silence settles over Vesper as the sun begins to burn the morning mists away. Ozma can only watch, horrified.

 

“I can control the Grimm,” Salem says finally, “but I do not control _all_ of the Grimm. I cannot and will not account for every little Creep in Remnant.”

 

Oren presses the blade to their neck, drawing a few beads of blood.

 

“I will call back my hordes,” Salem says. “I’ve found what I wanted, anyway.”

 

“You will be satisfied with only us,” Oren says.

 

A smile graces the edge of Salem’s lips. “Oh, yes.”

 

 _I’ll do it,_ Oren says to Ozma, and then lets go.

 

Ozma stumbles as he regains control. _Wait!_ he calls to Oren, but the other man has already vanished into the recesses of their mind. He closes his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath before turning back to Salem.

 

“It seems,” he says, and each word rings hollow to him as death knells, tolling over a burned countryside, “that we have a deal.”

 

—————

 

The first thing Salem does is collar him.

 

It manifests in white lines on the tanned skin of Oren’s neck, curling in graceful, deadly patterns of vines and thorns; he feels it settle over his head and bites his lip to stop himself from fighting this on instinct. Immediately, his access to his magic is choked down to a trickle.

 

Salem glances over her handiwork with a satisfied look in her eyes, and he feels weak, hollowed out.

 

It means he has little to nothing to fight back with when she sets about breaking him slowly, methodically. There’s not much he can do except bear it, hoping that perhaps the pain he feels in the moment is nothing, just a small fragment of his soul suffering while the vast majority of him waits, outside the brilliant white boundaries of the collar.

 

Being tortured is not a passive act; it can’t just be something that is _done_ to him, but something he, too, must participate in. Salem refuses to let him escape to some distant, dispassionate corner of his mind. She demands responses from him, and when he is just a fraction of a second too late in giving it to her, she makes her displeasure known.

 

And he learns many things, also; he learns that pain comes in colors, from a dull throbbing red to a violent indigo to brilliant wavelengths on a spectrum beyond what he can see. He learns the feeling of different surfaces beneath his knees, and the gradient of numbness that leaches the hours away. He learns how to beg and plead and grovel before her; he learns how to fight back the screams, to bite the inside of his mouth so hard that he has to spit out blood when she's gone. He relearns the contours of a voice he once loved, except this time, he focuses on the modulations that betray frustration, pettiness, and the most terrifying, a silent, steady fury.

 

He forgets things, too, things that aren’t important to know. Time is one of the first to go, followed shortly by the conception of a world beyond a realm of jagged stone and darkness. He forgets the meaning of his name, remembers only the significance of it when she calls him.

 

What scares him the most is when he begins to forget why he’s here, and who he’s doing this for.

 

Salem, for the most part, doesn’t like to dirty her hands. For a sorceress as powerful as she is, it’s not even a hindrance. A woman who could single-handedly contort a Nevermore into nonbeing could easily do the same to a fragile human skeleton.

 

But when he is forgetting how he got here and why he must suffer, he is forgetting light at the same time; Salem has left him alone for once in a lightless room, after shattering the bones from his left foot to his left knee when she flung him against a wall and his leg got in the way. He knows, that without proper care, the limb will not heal properly; he knows that she will come back and _tsk_ over his carelessness, will say mockingly kind words about how she’ll have to rebreak and reset the bones for his own good. He knows all this will happen, and even if he knows what she’s trying to do, the pain and the relief and the conditioning and the breaking, he also knows that she will succeed, and he hates it. She is already succeeding, because he can’t remember why this is happening and can only assume it was for something he did wrong in the past, though what he doesn’t know, because she always seems to find fault with him even when he scrambles to obey, so there must be something wrong with _him_ inherently, and—

 

 _No, that’s not right_.

 

The stone floor — he may have lost his sight, but the river-smooth stone is still intimately familiar — is cold. He curls into himself, and cries out from the pain when the movement jostles his leg. If only he hadn’t displeased her, she—

 

 _No, that’s not right. This isn’t your fault_.

 

Confusion. How could it not be his fault—? He was here, he was in pain, and it was because he done something wrong, or maybe he himself was wrong—

 

_Stop that. She isn’t fixing you. You don’t need to be fixed._

 

He must have forgotten how to converse at some point, because it takes him a few tries. _But then… why…?_ he finally manages.

 

The voice in his head seems to understand perfectly. _I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I’m sorry I left you alone to bear this. But you have to come back to me, Ozma. Remember who you are. Why you’re doing this._

 

There is something different about the way the voice in his head says it, says his name like it _means_ something, something more than a command to be obeyed or a demand for his attention. The way the voice says _Ozma_ like it sees him, actually sees _him_ , not just the bone-deep flaws she has been trying to excise from him—

 

 _What has she done to you?_ the voice asks softly, and something touches him.

 

He flinches away furiously, then gives a strangled cry as the pain make it hard to breathe.

 

 _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Ozma, I didn’t mean to startle you, I’m right here. Come to me._ The voice seems to be drawing him somewhere, somewhere deeper, somewhere internal, and Ozma shies away — he can’t not be present, what if she asks him to respond —

 

_She’s not here right now. Please, Ozma. Trust me._

 

He doesn’t know what makes the decision — Salem’s absence, the implicit command, or the sense of being seen — but he follows.

 

There is a soft gasp, and suddenly the pain falls away — not completely, but enough that Ozma can think again. His mind feels… almost clear. _Oren?_ he asks, and his heart aches at how unfamiliar the name feels.

 

 _Right here_. Oren’s voice sounds pained, because he’s — oh. _As I should have been from the beginning._

 

_No, you shouldn’t have, you never asked for this, you were never a part of this fight—_

 

There is a gentle touch, like someone laying a finger upon his lips. _Shhh_. And then he feels himself being enveloped in a slow, gentle, not-quite embrace. _Listen_. _See_.

 

And Oren is showing him colors that have no pain, the laughter of a young girl ( _my sister_ , Oren says fondly), the feeling of a warm breeze on a late spring evening, the warm flecks of amber in a man’s eyes, the sensation of a hand clasping his. Memories, Ozma realizes, and almost chokes on that understanding. Had he ever noticed how heartbreakingly _beautiful_ the world outside was?

 

 _This is why,_ Oren says, though he sounds distant. _This is why we’re here. So that they —_ flashes of a dark-haired, golden-eyed girl, a smiling woman, a man with eyes the color of his own, and an overwhelming sense of loss — _can live in peace._

 

In a world of terrible danger and terrible beauty, yes. Ozma begins to remember. _We did this for them_ , he says slowly.

 

 _Well. Not for them exactly._ The sorrow in Oren’s voice feels like a pool in darkness — deep, still, bottomless. _But for everyone else_.

 

He sees fires going out, he sees lives undisturbed. He sees the hint of green on terraced fields, and he longs to be there.

 

 _Some day_ , Oren promises. _You’ll return there. Some day._

 

 _But you won’t_ , Ozma realizes. _Oren, I am so, so sorry—_

 

 _As am I._ Oren’s voice is firm. _But I told you I’d go through with this, and I won’t back out now._

 

 _But you shouldn’t have been dragged into this, you were never given a_ choice _that I would end up in your head—_

 

 _And if you hadn’t, I would have died that night,_ Oren says. _My life was forfeit, and you dragged me out of the flames._

 

_That doesn’t give me the right to spend your life like a coin!_

 

 _It kind of does, when you think about it_. Oren huffs, dryly amused, and Ozma has to take a moment to admire that Oren still seems to have the capacity for laughter. _But you’re right — I never asked for you to come into my life. And you never asked to be sentenced to yours. But we’re both here, now, and the choice is ours to work with what we have._

 

Ozma hears an echo of another voice — _nothing about this is okay, but you want things to get better, and I want things to get better, so there’s not much we can do but move forward_ — and hopes that Oliver can’t see him now.

 

 _He’d be proud of you. You’ve been very brave_.

 

 _I am at least four times older than you,_ Ozma says. _How come you get to be the wise one now?_

 

There’s a long pause. _Aged beyond my years_ , comes the reply, finally. _But you know I’m right, deep down. Don’t let that go_.

 

—————

 

He tries not to. He really does. And with Oren back, it becomes easier to bear, easier to remember the things that matter. In the silences, they are there to comfort each other, and in the moment, they are both present, together, suffering side by side, and somehow, that makes it better.

 

Ozma never stops apologizing for allowing Salem to ruin Oren’s body, and Oren never stops forgiving him.

 

Salem cares for him afterwards, now, hands gentle and repulsive as they bring blessed relief, magic healing the hurts it had made just moments ago. Ozma hates it but he leans into her hold, body going limp and relaxing and trusting in a way only the conditioned and the truly exhausted feel. He listens to Oren’s exhortations to stay strong, to not fall for it, and he tries to fight, he really does, but there is only so much he can do to fight conditioning in a borrowed body. He lives in constant terror and need for her touch.

 

Ozma’s hosts rarely die in their sleep, and Oren is younger than most, though he goes kicking and screaming into the night, fighting to the last.

 

Ozma holds Oren at bay though, because it’s his fault that they’re here, and if there is any pain to be had, Ozma will take it before he lets his hosts even come close, but perhaps that is a mistake because Salem is throttling him with a black-purple energy, and there’s far more blood on the black stone floor than can be good, and she’s impressing upon him a matter of the utmost importance, and the last thing he hears her hiss at him is, “ _you will come back to me—”_

 

And Ozma wakes up in blind terror, coughing and massaging his neck, in a bed he doesn’t recognize in a house he’s never been to, and he scrambles out of bed and to the window, throwing it open.

 

It’s there, all of it — a seething ocean of teeming power, all of his magic pouring back to him in joyous reunion. It fills him to the brim, but all it does is heighten his terror, and he channels it out of him and into the sky.

 

The heavens burst green in a magnificent shower of light, illuminating the sleepy village and the forest for miles around.

 

His magic gone, he slowly regains control of his breathing, evening them out to desperate gulps to heavy pants to something resembling normalcy.

 

He turns away from the window, only for a great, terrible force to seize his body and lock it into place. A voice roars at him,

_WHAT_

_HAVE_

_YOU_

**DONE**

 

—————

 

They run — as fast as they can, as far as they can, hoping that they can put enough distance between them and Ofelio’s family to ensure their safety. Salem catches up to them within the week, and Ofelio never forgives Ozma — understands, but never forgives.

 

—————

 

His guilt over Ofelio is enough to check his instinctive reaction to let loose his magic upon reincarnation so Salem can find him. His hosts may not have the choice to accept his reincarnation, but he won’t take any more choices away from them if he can help it.

 

So he explains Salem’s deal: Osan, who has only an estranged brother and no other close loved ones, takes it. So does Otieri. Orion expresses some doubt — Grimm activity has been steadily on the rise for the past few decades, he warns Ozma, does he really think that Salem is holding up her end of the deal?

 

Ozma shows him the teeming hordes of Grimm gathered around the pools of darkness that Otieri saw just weeks ago, and Orion wilts _._

 

His partnership with Orion lasts much longer than any of his other hosts did in Salem’s grasp, and if anything, Salem seems to care _less_ about Ozma now, often leaving him alone — and unharmed — for days at a time. Ozma paces the hallways of her castle and discusses it with Orion, troubled.

 

Salem finds out, of course, and lets a pack of her Beowolves tear him to shreds.

 

Orlando is the first not only to refuse the offer, but to fight back against Ozma. Not against Ozma as a person, exactly, but against the foundations he’s built himself upon over the past few lifetimes.

 

“You don’t have to do this!” Orlando shouts at Ozma, completely uncaring if people on the streets of bustling town of Mantle are staring at him. “No one asked you to!”

 

_Orlando, please, we can discuss this elsewhere—_

 

“No we _can’t_!” Orlando’s voice rises in outrage. “You can’t even _see_ what she’s done to you, she’s gotten so deep inside you that you don’t even see how fucked up it is, you just go back to her and you think you deserve it, but I _refuse to be silenced!_ ”

 

Ozma tries to take control, but Orlando and his incandescent rage holds him off with surprising ease. “No! Fuck this! No!” Orlando storms down a side alley, a halfway-concession to decorum. “You do _not_ get my consent to continue on this cyclical suicide mission, and if you care about choice so much, you’ll respect my decision!”

 

_You don’t understand, the Grimm hordes—_

 

“Fuck the Grimm hordes! Fuck Salem! Fuck humanity! And fuck you too! Who gave you the right to decide to sacrifice yourself for everyone? We don’t deserve that! Humanity doesn’t deserve that!”

 

That makes Ozma freeze. _What did you say?_

 

“You heard me: humanity doesn’t deserve a savior who will crucify himself again and again and again to keep them safe. No one even _knows_ you're doing this. Who cares about the Grimm hordes? Let them come! We’ll fight them off.”

 

 _You’ll_ die _._

 

“And we’ll learn to _fight them better_. If you just protect people like this, Ozma, they’re never going to learn! They’re never going to get better at defending themselves, they’re never going to have to learn how to work together, and then you’ll _still_ have failed in your task!”

 

Ozma is silent for a long time, but Orlando waits for him.Then… _what can I do?_

 

Orlando takes a deep breath, tilting his head back against the wall. “You stop trying to take the weight of the world on your shoulders. You find friends who can help you. You _fight back_.”

 

… _how?_

 

“Still working that part out. How do you feel about taking over the world?”

 

—————

 

Orlando doesn’t see world domination, but Ozymandias does, and they both relish in the expressions on the faces of each Kingdom’s leader when Ozymandias turns down the throne and instead, lays down a sweeping plan for a government by council, the institution of Huntsman Academies.

 

 _That went… shockingly well_ , Ozma remarks as the meeting adjourns.

 

 _Told you so,_ Ozymandias replies, smug.

 

 _Do you think it’ll work_?

 

“I don’t know,” Ozymandias says out loud. “But it’ll be a damn sight better than what we’ve had in the past.”

 

—————

 

Ozma learns this, too, though it takes him a long time: he may have lived for centuries, may have seen impossible things and dreamed impossible dreams, but despite all this, his hosts are usually the ones who are right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_coda_ **

 

He hears a voice calling his name, footsteps struggling over gravel and debris.

 

“Ozpin? Oz!”

 

He knows that voice, and he summons the strength to lift his arm — the one not pinned by fallen stone — skywards. “Here,” he says, or he tries to say. It comes out more like a pained wheeze.

 

“Oh Dust, oh, fuck, Oz, stay with me.” And then the voice is there, right behind him, distressed hands running over his broken body. “You’re going to be okay. Listen to me, you hear? You’re going to be okay.”

 

Ozpin can’t decide if it’s more effort to shake his head or to try speaking again, but just then, Qrow digs his hands under Ozpin’s shoulders to prop him up against his own body, and the movement tears an involuntary cry of pain from Ozpin’s throat.

 

“Fuck! I’m sorry, I made it worse didn’t I, I always make it worse—”

 

Not lying on the ground actually helps quite a bit, Ozpin observes. He feels like his head is clearing. Maybe it’s because the blood that’s oozing out of him is no longer pooling by his ears.

 

“No,” he rasps, and Qrow’s rambling immediately shuts off. “ ’S better.” He reaches out, fingers straining.

 

“What are you looking for — oh.” Shaking fingers press Ozpin’s cane into his hands, and he relaxes.

 

“You’re going to be fine, Oz, you hear me?” Qrow presses a kiss to the top of his head. “Just hang on until help arrives. Glynda’s searching the tower and James is mustering a medical team, all you need to do is stay with me—”

 

Ozpin shakes his head — he knows when a fight is done. “Promise,” he says, lifting his cane.

 

“I promise I won’t leave, I’m right here—”

 

Ozpin makes a noise of protest, and Qrow shuts up. Why did dying always have to hurt so damn much? He presses his cane into Qrow’s hand. “Promise — you’ll come —” he gulps a deep breath, chest filled with white fire. Punctured lungs were always the worst. “— find me.”

 

He feels Qrow stiffen behind him, and Ozpin can’t help it — the terror is creeping back in, the terror of reincarnating, of becoming helpless once more, of _her_ finding him again —

 

“I promise,” Qrow whispers, savage. “I’ll come looking for you. I’ll walk across the entirety of Anima if I have to, and if I still haven’t found you, I’ll go to Sanus and Solitas and keep looking.”

 

Ozpin’s next breath shudders on the way out, and he fights his eyelids as they try to close.

 

“I’ll make Ironwood put all those troops of his to good use and comb every continent, and if I still don’t find you then, I’ll make him put all his money in submarines and go looking for you in the oceans.”

 

Qrow’s hand is tight around his, around his cane.

 

“I’ll burn down the entire Forest of Forever Fall so I can find you in the ashes. Glynda will give me hell for it but I’ll plant it all again when I’ve found you, and in a hundred years you can walk through it again and it’ll all be as good as new.”

 

Despite how hard he tries, this breath is shallower than the last. He can feel tears at the corner of his eyes — he’s _dying_ , how does his body still have the energy for _tears_? — tracing burning trails down his cheeks.

 

“And if somehow, despite all this, she manages to get to you first, then I’ll call up every Huntsman I know in Remnant and tell them to bring all their friends, and we will find you in the Dark Realm. We’ll leave a trail so bright that the gods will see it from a million million miles away and come back just to find out what’s going on.”

 

 _Anytime now,_ Ozpin thinks, and he feels another mind surround him in a warm embrace, one that he hasn’t met as a separate individual for some time now.

 

“She won’t have you, Oz. She doesn’t deserve you, and she never will. If it’s the last thing you hear in this life, Oz — _I’m coming for you_.”

 

—————

 

When he wakes up, he rubs the sleep out of tired eyes and glances out the window.

 

The sun is just rising, and it looks to be a beautiful summer day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> listen, I'm just as upset as you folks
> 
> I'm also pretty new to ao3 and all this tagging business, so if people want to throw recommendations in the comments, that'd be lit


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